


Awakening

by riverdaze



Series: Questioning [1]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: 2x01, Adolescent Sexuality, Bisexuality, Child Neglect, Episode Tag, First Crush, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, LGBTQ Themes, Natsume Takashi's Terrible Childhood, Natsume has a lot of questions because no one ever explained anything to him, Other, Pansexual Character, Questioning, Self-Doubt, and now he has a complex, but for tagging purposes, but nothing graphic, fear of intimacy, in the specific sense of allowing children access to age inappropriate content, not even the heteronormative stuff, not that he knows either way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25535500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverdaze/pseuds/riverdaze
Summary: After being held in the solid and protective arms of Riou-sama, the winged lord of the forest, Natsume has to wade through new and difficult feelings. They lead to questions he never had the energy for before this period of stability in his life.
Relationships: Madara "Nyanko-sensei" & Natsume Takashi, Natsume Takashi & Everyone
Series: Questioning [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850278
Comments: 9
Kudos: 81





	Awakening

“He sure was cute.”

The words throw Nyanko-sensei into a fit. It’s expected; that is, after all, why Takashi said them. It was teasing, an innocent observation about a black cat… except it wasn’t a cat, and maybe, like the clay lucky-cat, Takashi’s innocuous words hide something too profound to be freed without giving it a name.

He doesn’t know how, though. All he does know is that the youkai who emerged from that statue and held Takashi in an embrace that made him feel both small and safe-- two adjectives that had never melded well in his life--made Takashi’s chest feel tight and mouth go dry. He decides to call the feeling awe, but if that’s its name, it doesn’t seem to be satisfied with the return.

Benio leaves, and Takashi is left looking out the window and thinking about the concept of goodbye. As he does so, the memory of feathery touches brushes over his skin.

Riou-sama. That had been his name, the name of the creature that held Takashi and gave Takashi a piece of his memory and whispered in Takashi’s ear with a low shivery voice. Goosebumps rush over his skin.

He sure was cute.

Beautiful, even.

Takashi turns away from the window with a suddenness that has Nyanko flying off the sill. 

“Hey! What’s the big idea, brat?”

“Bath,” Takashi says, gathering his things without making eye contact. 

_“The bath was wonderful”_

The buttons of his pajamas dig into his chin as he squeezes them to his body. He gave the not-cat a bath, a bath Riou-sama remembered and enjoyed. He… Takashi stops in the middle of the hallway, the sound of Touko humming floating up the staircase.

He bathed Riou-sama while Takashi himself was in the bath.

If Takashi wasn’t in the strict habit of staying quiet when he could, he might have screamed. As it was, he used his pajamas to cover the burn of his face, allowing a humiliated whimper to hang in his throat.

“Hehehe.”

Snapping his head back, Takashi finds Nyanko peeking his head around the doorway and staring at Takashi with a look Takashi doesn’t like.

“What?” he asks, defensive.

“Nooothing. Humans really are pathetic, vulnerable things,” he says. Then he about-faced and slunk back into Takashi’s bedroom.

“Stupid cat,” Takashi grumbles even as his face burns even hotter.

In the tub, Takashi wonders what Riou-sama saw. He looks over the sprawl of his body, and the awareness of even just his own eyes causes his knees to breach the surface, curling in close to make himself a smaller target for judgment. Displaced water spills over the side. After the reaction subsides and his legs sink again, Takashi tries to impartially judge what he might look like to others. He takes stock of bony wrists and ankles and knees, a few ribs--not as many as when the Fujiwara’s first allowed him to live with them--, and sallow skin that persists even now that the country sun was giving him some mimicry of lively color.

It’s nothing special, average. Certainly nothing as impressive as... That’s good, though. Takashi has always aimed for average, and reaching it still feels like a milestone, with how rarely it happens. Even now, he knows the victory is somewhat disingenuous. He only seems normal because, through the water’s disruptive surface, his scars aren’t as stark, instead melding into the imprecise form of his skin.

If he looks closely, though, they’re scattered all about, keepsakes and warnings--directly or indirectly--from run-ins with youkai.

Mostly, from run-ins with youkai.

The others…

He’s been thinking a lot recently, Takashi, about big things like safety and family and the interconnected and relative nature of each, things he’d never been able to stop to consider before. There are some things--he rubs a small scar along his thigh and thinks of broken glass--he still can’t sit down and consider the way he’s slowly realizing he’ll one day need to. Other things, though...

Takashi looks up at the single yellow light above the tub until the glare stings his eyes. When he turns back to the water, blinking spots out of his vision, he’s ready to concentrate on the present. On family. On the future. On goodbyes and his new melancholy towards them.

Would he ever see Riou-sama again?

No, probably not. And, suddenly, that is equally as frightening as seeing him again would be mortifying.

Then again, perhaps the most frightening thing would be if the opposite somehow manifested, if he saw Riou-sama every day from now on, grew a habit, an expectation, and then... 

The thing is, for a long time, the only stability in Takashi’s life was instability. He was used to looking at opportunities and connections, and knowing reality would buckle under his weight if he tried to reach for them. What he isn’t used to is looking and thinking, maybe, it would hold. Maybe he could reach, and the ground would not so much as shake. Where there really things, he wondered, that were permanent? What kinds of things were those?

An image of the Fujiwaras lodges itself firmly in Takashi’s head. Nishimura, Kitamoto, Sasada… Tanuma. Nyanko-sensei. Maybe…

But no.

Maybe if things had happened sooner, it’d be different now. As it is, Takashi recognizes the upcoming hurdles. He’s fifteen, and he’s long accepted that the illusion of having a family to go home to would disappear one day soon. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Eighteen. And that was it. Three years.

Once, Before, three (four, five, eight) years had seemed so very long, an ever contorting barrier to finally being left alone, not having to worry, to not being looked at and laughed at and called names and--he touches the scar again--and other things. It felt like multiple lifetimes--one for each new family he invaded--would pass before he could stop being a burden on everyone else. He’d looked for ways to shorten the time, even (and so had others, he knew. Talks of emancipation, of finding work, heard through cracked doors).

Now, though, three years… three short years, and it’s over.

Or it should be. In the past, Takashi would never dare to think otherwise. Still, though, he thinks of Touko’s worried smile, and wonders, maybe--and he doesn’t mean to be presumptuous, but, maybe--they’d still want him? He’d get a job, of course! To pay them back. But, maybe, he could go to university, and during breaks and even long holidays, they wouldn’t mind--might even like--if he… came back?

It’s such a bold thought, dangerous. It’s risky to even go as far as to think he’ll still be here in three years. Staying in the same place for that long? It’s nearly inconceivable, unthinkable to the Takashi of not too long ago at all. But that’s what this place--the Fujiwaras, his friends, The Book of Friends, even--has done to him. They’ve made him start thinking about the unthinkable. And one of those once unthinkable things is… 

More water spills out of the tub, the splash of it echoing around the tile room when Takashi’s hand surfaces, pads of his fingers pressing lightly against his lips.

Today. Riou-sama. _He sure was cute_.

Unthinkable.

It’s silly to even try and imagine it, really. Riou-sama is a giant, after all!

...One that could take on human form. So, for the sake of imagination, if he had made himself human-sized when they spoke earlier… Takashi’s fingers press harder against his lips.

The bathwater is getting cold. That’s why Takashi shivers.

His hand hits the surface of the water with a sting, a physical one that pales in comparison to the mental bite that had it fleeing his lips in the first place. Both hands leverage on the sides of the tub as Takashi stands. The water floods down his body, following and accentuating the contours of the scars it had earlier hidden. Takashi does not allow himself strong opinions on the marks, but he knows, objectively, that they aren’t pretty.

Unthinkable.

Stepping out over the edge, Takashi grabs his towel and dries himself off… like he had for Riou-sama.

_“You’re a boy? You don’t look like a boy!” A laugh, a tug on his hair that’s a little too long._

_Running, danger, hands outstretched, another body tumbling down. “Hey, Takashi jumped on Takahiro! Ooooh, are you blushing? I bet he has a crush, like a girl!”_

No. Not even worth thinking about. Except, it’s not the same, right? Riou-sama is a youkai, not a man. Nyanko-sensei had said himself that youkai were mostly disinterested in human concepts like gender. It’s not strange to be awed in such a way by youkai; half the stories about them involve humans falling for their charms. They come in a broad range of forms, from the ugly horror of the rokurokubi in the bush yesterday afternoon to the literally ethereal beauty of Riou-sama. So when one is left on the fringes of human society, it can’t be helped that he might start to notice _things_. It doesn’t mean anything, not if they’re yokai.

So if Riou-sama is not a man, if he’s a youkai who exists beyond such things and, more importantly, beyond Takashi’s reach either way, then there’s no harm in just imagining for a moment…

Looking up, Takashi meets the gaze of his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He straightens, towel clenched in a fist, and trailing down to pool onto the floor. As expected, his body is somehow even less impressive out of the water, scrawny and flawed in ways that betray weakness irrelevant to any spiritual power, a deficiency of essence. There’s something there, hidden behind inhuman eyes and under fine hair--light brown and pale blond, respectively, he tells himself even as those same eyes say otherwise (then again, not to Riou-sama, and Takashi recoils from the idea, used to feeling relief that at least humans don’t notice that even more obnoxiously weird part of him, before he remembers that the whole point is that Riou-sama is a youkai who would be unbothered by that sort of thing anyway)--that causes good people not to want him.

Want.

He’s not sure in what sense he’s using the word, in what sense he’s even comfortable with it. There are things, Takashi knows, that his peers have already thought about, already figured out, or at least started to figure out, that he’s lagging hopelessly behind in.

The hand not gripping tight onto his damp towel rises up and carefully lays itself on his navel, sliding down. His mirror self, he notices, looks a bit frightened, wide-eyed and shivering in the cold. Takashi turns away, head ducked as he finishes drying off and putting on his pajamas.

In his room, Takashi rolls out his futon and turns out the light while avoiding Nyanko-sensei’s haughty knowing eyes. He doesn’t know, exactly, what Nyanko thinks he knows, or what he might think about what he thinks he knows. Takashi depends on the fundamental disconnect of the meaning of intimacy between youkai and humans to keep him from becoming too anxious about it. Whatever Nyanko has guessed, he figures, chances are it’s completely wrong anyway.

“Goodnight,” Takashi mumbles as he drags his blankets nearly entirely over his head, well aware that it’s something he only does when he’s trying to hide. Nyanko doesn’t say anything for a while, but he nudges Takashi’s foot as he curls up on the futon.

“Goodnight, brat.”

Like in the privacy of the bath, the isolating feeling of silence prompts Takashi’s mind to suggest more avenues for self-reflection, but Takashi tries to avoid it, having gone as far as he’s willing for the day. After a few minutes of tossing, he settles on his side. Under the sheets, his hand slips between the buttons of his pajama top, and slides up and down over his ribs. It’s a habit that’s not quite as satisfying now that the texture is less uneven, but it still serves to lull him into sleep.

Unfortunately, though he can stop his waking mind from going places he doesn’t want to follow, Takashi has long learned there’s nothing he can do about his dreams.

They’re not nightmares, far from it. Takashi’s dreams are full of strong, gentle hands, warm androgynous bodies, feathery lips, and, at the very end, Riou-sama, human-sized and holding Takashi _very_ close. When he wakes up, it’s with a gasp, but not the kind that accompanies terror. At the same time, it’s not a pleasant sound, either.

Breathing hard, Takashi sits up, taking in the safe unchanged space of his room while his mind tries desperately to process where it’s just been. His body is hot, and aches in mostly, but not entirely, unfamiliar places. He knows what’s happening, but he doesn’t want to think about it, so he’s willingly distracted by a soft breeze shuffling his hair and the papers on his desk. When he looks to the window, he finds Nyanko-sensei, fur ruffled and nose wrinkled as he glares down at Takashi.

“Oi! Just because you have gross human feelings doesn’t mean you can stink up the room with them.”

A somewhat more familiar heat rushes up Takashi’s body, painting him in reds. When he speaks, though, his lips are cold, numb. To Takashi, the disgust in Nyanko-sensei’s eyes makes his lucky cat body indistinguishable from the looming nature of his true form.

“I-I’m sorry,”

“Hmph, whatever.” Nyanko shakes himself out, preparing to jump outside. “I’m going to a sak--”

“No.” Takashi finds himself in the interesting position of being far enough in control of himself to not shout the word, but not enough to keep it from escaping in the first place.

“Huh?”

“... Don’t leave me alone,” he says, despite it going against his learned nature. _Not like this_ , he doesn’t say, because it would make no sense. Nyanko wouldn’t be leaving him in any state of vulnerability not intrinsic to the human condition. Still, the thought of being left here with his body and its wants has Takashi shivering. Nyanko watches him with one of his undecipherable blank looks, silent and glassy-eyed, before he sighs and jumps back down into the room.

“Ah, humans don’t make any sense,” he complains as he stretches out. “Don’t you all like that ‘privacy’ stuff? I’ve changed my mind about going out anyway, though, so you’ll just have to deal with it,”

“Thank you, Sensei,” 

“Hmph. It has nothing to do with you. I’m just not in the mood anymore.” Nyanko curls up at Takashi’s side with a not altogether convincing yawn. The stubbly fur between his ears is cool under Takashi’s hand, and for a while, the only sounds are gentle scratching and the ring of the chime on the open window. While the quiet moment stretches on, the heat on Takashi’s skin disperses, his body relaxing enough for him to bring his legs in, thighs pressed together.

As he curls his other arm around his knees, Takashi acknowledges that these things aren’t going to disappear. If he doesn’t want them to emerge while he’s asleep, he’s going to have to sort them out while he’s awake.

This, he knows, isn’t really about Riou-sama, not entirely.

It isn’t that Takashi _doesn’t_ like girls. It’d never been something he could concentrate on thinking about, but--a face or two flashes through his mind--it is nice to think about them. So why is he so worried about what specific thing it was that attracted him to someone like Riou-sama? It doesn’t matter, anyway, so long as he likes girls.

But… even then… it’s not entirely about that, either. There had been girls in his dream, or, at least, bodies that he couldn’t really tell either way.

It’s just…

There are a lot of things Takashi knows he doesn’t know, things he thinks others had probably been told that he hadn’t been. The first time his body did weird things, he had a distressingly minimal understanding of what was happening.

In the darkness of his room, Takashi drops his head and snorts into his arm, remembering his vague idea that the ayakashi might have done something to him. His humor fades quickly, though, because, at the time, it hadn’t been so funny. His only experiences with the idea of intimacy had been confusing things he hadn’t had context for yet. There was a guardian who brought their affairs home while Takashi stayed quiet and still in the room next door, not understanding what he was hearing. There was another who didn’t see the point in modifying their television viewing for Takashi’s sake, leaving Takashi sitting at the edge of the couch, staring wide-eyed as the hero of the movie met a woman and took off her clothes. The hero pulled on her hair--which Takashi knew was something violent and wasn’t right--and they said bad words to each other. It looked like he was hurting her; and when he first recognized an echo of the scene in his own body, all he could think about was how he never wanted to hurt anyone.

Even now, with years, understanding, and a home between those experiences and his apparently newly awoken interest in physicality, he can’t help but think of it as something frightening--painful, confusing, and better left untouched in every respect. However, leaving it behind only worked Before, when, in thoughts of the future, things like ‘family’ and ‘partners’ had been so far outside his list of possibilities that they hadn’t even skidded past his peripherals. His only goal had been to be alone where he could tighten up and control as much as possible, stop causing good people trouble, remove any extraneous variables in his unstable world. His goal had been loneliness, but the less painful kind, the kind where you weren’t also surrounded by unreachable people.

Now here he is, having to admit that isn’t what he wants, and if that’s the case… what does that future look like now? A home with him and a woman?... a man? He doesn’t know. A kind person, that’s really all he can come up with. Whatever happens, he wants more than anything for it to be like what he has right now: a house filled with care and no other expectations.

That isn’t how these things work, though; he knows that. So the future was muddied now in ways he never could have predicted, more confusing than it ever was Before.

“Nya--” Takashi pauses, swallows, and tries again. “Nyanko-sensei,--” Nyanko hummed in acknowledgment-- “do you… do you think Reiko-san was… happy whenever she was with my grandfather?”

The charm in the window chimes in a breeze that cools Takashi’s skin.

“Ha? How should I know about something like that?” Nyanko-sensei sniffed with disdain.

“Oh…” He expected as much, really. If there’s one thing he knows about Reiko, from humans and youkai alike, it’s that she was alone. He’d probably already know if anything changed that.

“Don’t make that face. It has nothing to do with you, anyway. You’re nothing like Reiko, with all your annoying friends,”

“But do you think, after this is all over--”

“Are you planning on cheating me?”

“Huh?”

“Our deal, idiot. Are you planning on cheating me out of the Book of Friends?”

“You know I won’t,”

“Then I guess you’re stuck with me until the day you die. But don’t think I’m putting up with you for a second after that!” He huffs again, curling into a tighter ball and making it clear the conversation is over.

After a few seconds, Takashi’s lips twitch into a quick smile.

“I guess I am,” he says as he pats Nyanko-sensei’s head one last time, and lays back down under his covers. It still takes a while for him to settle back into sleep, but when he does, his dreams don’t bother him as much.

In the morning, he sits in the kitchen watching Touko and Shigeru work around each other. They get ready for their days with an affection so casual it seems like an inevitability.

Takashi still doesn’t know what he wants out of the future, what he can even bring himself to dare to expect, but, somehow, he knows he won’t be alone. For now, that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This is 3k of pretty much pure introspection where I overthink Natsume's sexuality based on literally nothing, and still don't come close to getting all my thoughts in order. I'm not sorry.
> 
> It's just, who gave Natsume The Talk? I doubt anyone invested in that sort of long term thing when people avoid having that convo even with their own kids. I mean, I learned from the internet, which is... not great. But Natsume didn't have access to even that. Listen, I feel very parental towards this child, and I am concerned.
> 
> Anyway, the idea behind this series is Natsume discovering gender and sexuality both broadly, and in specific reference to himself. The rest of the works, however, should be more story-driven (I don't know how, but I'm going to get him to ask for help, goddamnit).
> 
> Edit: Please check out [this art](https://justaregulardecoratedemergency.tumblr.com/post/626004134443859968/riou-sama-that-had-been-his-name-the-name-of) that was motivated by this fic. It's so pretty!  
> 


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